Thoroughly recommend The Book of Mormon, now on at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. Cathy got us tickets for a post birthday treat and it was the best gift ever. We are both now committed members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints and we will be ringing your doorbell soon. Warm up the frogs for me!
I have walked up, over and down pedestrian overpasses in many of the great metropolises of the world, from London, to New York, Shanghai and even Manila, and I can honestly say that the new pedestrian overpass at the Ballarat Railway station is up amongst the best of them.
The raised pedestrian walkways of Paris are, for the most part, grimy and old and nothing to aspire to. There is too much history about them; the patina consists of spit, cigarette ends, tears and bread crumbs. There are reasons why the French look to the stars.
This is not true of the newest addition to Ballarat’s modern makeover. It is a charming overpass. Its rizz commences as you ascend the steps at platform 1 and continues, unabated, until you disembark on platform 2.
As you cross the tracks dappled sun light sprinkles through a decorative sheath, ribbed as if the very sky had coalesced in thin driblets of matte silver magma. The Gold Town City is on the move, this funnel tells you. It is a 28 metre glimpse into the future.
If stairs are not your jam there are elevators at either side of this splendid structure, and they lift you quicker than the one in Myers does. In this way the Ballarat station has embraced inclusivity as, no matter your mobility needs, this uplifting experience is for everyone.
There were some who gripped their pearls and bemoaned the obstruction to the view of the undeniably beautiful heritage architecture, but in fact the train drivers are the only viewers from the eastern ingress.
At the end of their journey, with only the dash out to Wendouree left, they are likely only thinking about the tinny, or the cup of tea, waiting at home, to watch My Kitchen Rules, or maybe the footy, with a cat on their lap, purring. O what a sweet pussy it is.
The village idiot chief tip toes down the corridor to the quiet end of the wig wam, his tiny feet describing a pitiful triangle. The dirt looks up at his ball bag sadly.
“Now for some sharks!” he whispers to himself, nasally. It is lonely, being leader of the world.
He settles into his furs the way a landslide collapses down a mountain, or in the manner of a wall of ice sharding from a berg. Like a slain beast. Like yeast.
“Where the fucking fuck is that fucking fuck of a thing?”
His chubby pink fingers rifle through the furs, the assymetrical sheets, his woesome towel, looking for the remote.
“Why does the Channel 7 chopper chill me to my feet?”
He hisses at one of his goblin assistants, sounding more like a threat than a question. It keens pathetically, shit dribbles out from the edges of its y fronts, down it’s skinny green legs.
War starts, again. The algorithm shunts from insults to glory and onwards, to retribution, when glory is insulted. The great powers fall back to a game of soggy biscuit.
The sycophants cleave to their leader, but they have lost the capacity to find solace in each other. Emotionally barren ghost ships burp across an ocean of bones.
Death, death, death, the waves whisper back. Bubbles of joy kicks plop out from the slime.
Tipsy doodling in the dark from the Green Summer Music Festival, featuring a slew of talent at the always beautiful Ballarat Trades Hall. It was a charming event for a good cause, and I’m glad I dropped for the last few acts. My karma should be good to go until at least Wednesday.
The next morning I did not feel so much rock and roll as I did late stage Karen Carpenter; thin, worn out, water bottom. Regrets. Red Horse has an alcohol capacity of 6.9%, what you would call an extra strength beer. Uncle Raul has been drinking 3 little bottles of gin every night for the past thirty years, and even he shook his head as I cracked my ninth can.
The conversation had ranged widely in the nipa hut out the back of my brother-in-law’s, Sherwin’s, pad, from the intrigues of local politics, gossip, the finer points of family eccentricities, and what the village idiot had been up to lately. “
“This has been our habit since the beginning!” Sherwin declared, “And it will be our habit until the finish!”
And he laughed, abruptly, and slapped the bamboo table, and the plastic cups shook, and he threw back another shot of ginebra, where the angel slays the devil, and then, of course, a water chaser.
The last thing I remember was Sherwin’s pug, Caddue, farting again, a sick, thick scent that stuck in the throat. She does this every minutes. It had happened many times.
Our only mission for the that next day was to buy fire crackers for new year’s eve, and to get to the beach at San Fabian before sunset.
The water was warm. The sunset was sublime.
The journey to San Ramon from my home took 27 hours, from 4:30 AM East Australian time to 2:30 AM Philippines time. By the time we landed in Manila we still had 4 hours of travel left. I was deep in the throes of sleep deprivation, the lid kicked clean from my conscious mind, assailed by impressions, my emotions oscillating wildly from euphoria to despair.
At the end of the tunnel there was a monkey pox warning. It said beware of rabid dogs, monkeys, rats, bats, do not be bitten by these creatures, and avoid people covered in lesions. This I can do, I thought, and grabbed my daughter’s hand a little more tightly, keeping an eye out for dude’s with lesions beside the luggage carousel.
My eye was drawn to the only other white people in the place. There was the usual ageing bogan, gold chain, belly like a taught drum, high pants belted across the apex, socks pulled up to just below the knees. Filipino wife bringing him home for the back end of the Christmas festival.
There was also a very gaunt stick man, hand luggage in a plastic bag, skin stretched across his skull, eyes bulging. Plainly dying. I assumed he was headed to Angeles City, the elephant’s graveyard, for one more root before the reaper came.
There were also two younger guys, early twenties, who, in my sleepless imagination, i immediately lumped together with the stick man. They, too, were headed to Angeles City to get laid, and a wave of disgust washed through my fragile mind at this diabolical circle of life I had invented.
And with that vision came a feeling of gratitude at my own destiny’s shape. It is a blessing to have a family of your own. And perhaps the young guys were going snorkeling after all, abd rge doom I imagined for them was wrong.
And besides, my pants are not that high as yet. But I am halfway there.
